A gnostic work that presents Judas not as a traitor but as the true friend of Jesus who identified Jesus to the authorities on Jesus's request so that Jesus may escape the prison of his physical body and enter into the spiritual bliss of heaven. The work was given world-wide attention by the National Geographic Society's sensationalizing it in 2006.
Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, late in the 2nd Cent, knew about the Gospel of Judas and reported it as a "fictitious history." It was again reported and condemned by Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in the late 4th. Nothing is known about it since then until the find celebritized by National Geographic.
The National Geographic Society paid more than a million USD for the right to publish the gospel, and included in all the hype and fanfare were two books, a major article in the May issue of its magazine for that year (see image above), a TV special, an exhibition, and the launch of the gospel's own web-site. Despite all the fanfare, the official translation of the gospel turned out wrong, and most scholars are now of the opinion that the gospel has nothing to offer in terms of genuine insights into the historical Jesus.
Written in the 4th Cent, in the Coptic language but in a Greek script, the provenance of the copy published by the Society is unknown. It may have been stolen from what is now called the Nag Hammadi finds. It was first offered for sale in 1983. Unsold, it disappeared from sight until 2000, when it was purchased by an antiquities-trader, who subsequently turned it over to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art, Geneva, which restored the by-then crumpling manuscript.
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